Wednesday, April 8, 2015

So I finished Bloodborne in about four or five days, partly because I enjoy being something of a pathfinder when it comes to Souls games, and partly because I had a review to write. And write it I did. You can read it here, if you care enough and didn't catch me linking it a billion times on Twitter.

It was never going to stop there, though. I still had to investigate the Chalice Dungeons (purported by the developers to be a major component of this new IP) and play through the game at least once more to take a closer look at the story and pick up on any details that I naturally missed on my first run. Just the other day, Bloodborne earned the distinct honor of being my first platinum trophy, meaning that I have essentially done everything that there is to do in this game. I've seen all three endings (which involved completing NG+ and then doing NG++ with the skip trick), seen basically all NPC subplots unfold and spent an ungodly amount of time in the Chalice Dungeon. So, I'm now writing up this blog entry to summarize my final thoughts on the game.

Well, firstly, the opinion expressed in that review hasn't changed. It's a fabulous game, and if anything, replaying it (and subsequently reading numerous fan theories) has only boosted my appreciation for Yharnam as a fount of rich but ambiguous history, recapturing what I loved so very much about the first Dark Souls. The load times were literally the only thing preventing from awarding the game a perfect score, which underlines just how bad they were and how magnificent the rest of the game is. While it's not quite my favorite Souls title, I'd say it's the best by measurable standards, meaning it's the Souls game that I have the fewest complaints about.

My overview of the series is as follows. From Software were still getting into their groove with the first two Souls games. Demon's Souls suffers from a lot of design issues that continuously make me surprised that I seem to be the only one not fond of that game; Dark Souls perfected Miyazaki's design formula and minimalist storytelling style but still contained an awful lot of technical issues. Dark Souls II cleaned it up and was the most stable of the bunch, but it's also got the least interesting, most nonsensical world (not surprising, since it's the only time Miyazaki didn't direct). With Bloodborne, we finally get nuance and polish on top of fresh, fascinating lore. It's exactly the game that I wanted it to be.

Good thing I consider the Chalice Dungeons to be a separate entity, then, because they're pretty lame, sadly. The very idea of having procedurally-generated Souls dungeons is a bit odd, since the series' articulate and very deliberate design, in conjunction with lore that's shrouded in mystery, is what makes it work so well. Reducing that formula to formless dungeon crawling, mainly in nondescript underground tunnels, is kinda the opposite of that. I suppose we can thank the gaming industry's current obsession with roguelikes for this addition, but it doesn't mesh well with Souls intrigue at all.

The only reason I stuck with it was a thirst to see everything that Bloodborne has to offer, and the Chalice Dungeons do indeed have some bosses unique to this mode. Unlocking them, however, is beyond a chore. There are four different "worlds," several types of dungeon per world, and three or four levels to a dungeon. The ritual involved in opening a new dungeon requires materials found in previous stages, and thus the process of opening new content becomes an insufferable grind. The dungeons themselves have virtually no variety, either in aesthetic or design. After a few trips, you'll have seen all of the variants.

As for the bosses themselves... eh. Most of them are rather straightforward in that they return to Dark Souls II's "big guy in armor" trend that the story bosses do a solid job of steering away from. They're repeated often, too, and feel a bit cheaply accelerated as you progress deeper into the labyrinth. One of the required dungeons, the "Defiled" variant, halves your health, which results in probably the most frustrating boss encounter of the entire series thus far (against a big fiery dog with an outrageous amount of health).

Weirdly, while the Chalice Dungeons can easily be ignored, they contain a couple of details somewhat important to Bloodborne lore. Specifically, the "final boss" is actually a big piece of the Yharnam puzzle, in ways I won't spoil. I guess it's in keeping with Miyazaki's principles that an important story nugget would be buried in a place where most players will never see it, and it does make me feel somewhat proud to have seen this particular aspect of the game through to the end, but the journey there was easily the least fun I've had with the game. I'd only recommend the Chalice Dungeons to absolute diehards, and even then, be warned that you're in for a rough trip.

Like I said, though, the opinion expressed in the review needs no real updating. While Bloodborne is smaller and more linear than previous Souls games, it's no less full of intriguing little world-building elements that you'll have missed the first time, and gaining a fuller understanding of Miyazaki's fascinating universes is one of the big reasons his games are so rewarding. And now that I'm finally finished with it, it's time to finally dive deep into Pillars of Eternity and see if March brought any other GOTY hopefuls.